New Zealand unveils major new tourism plan

10/4/2013

New Zealand has unveiled its new national tourism strategy, designed to maximise the potential of the sector over the next 12 years.

The ‘Tourism 2025′ strategy, which was released this week at the Tourism Industry Association (TIA) Summit in Wellington, identifies the need for New Zealand’s tourism sector to “evolve and adapt” to take advantage of new opportunities. It focuses on five key areas: Firstly, the need to “prioritise insight”, to enable the sector to track its own performance, which in turn would support the industry’s decision-making processes.Secondly, the plan identified the need to increase the country’s air connectivity. Ninety-nine percent of New Zealand’s visitors arrive by air, and Tourism 2025 stressed the need for “profitable international and domestic connectivity”.

Thirdly, the plan urges the industry to target “high-value opportunities”, including source markets like China and sectors like international student family visits, which it said “remain a rich, largely untapped, source of value”.